PSYCHOLINGUISTICS Grupo Alejandro Ferrer Moya Blanca Gallego Lopez

PSYCHOLINGUISTICS Grupo: Alejandro Ferrer Moya, Blanca Gallego Lopez, María Jose Garcia Ramón, Victoria Herrera Mercader, Soraya Lozano Carrión

INDEX INTRODUCTION n LANGUAGE ACQUISITION n n DEFINITION n THEORIES n PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS n CHILD LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT n BILINGUALISM n CONCLUSION

INTRODUCTION WHAT IS PSYCHOLINGUISTICS? n "Psycholinguistics is the study of the cognitive process that supports the acquisition and use of language" Schmitt, N. n "Psycholinguistics is the study of how the mind equips human beings to handle language" Simpson, J

INTRODUCTION HISTORY Over the centuries. . . Language discussions of language acquisition and of the origins of language. Nineteenth century. . . Parallel interest in the psichology of adult language development

INTRODUCTION Twentieth century. . . First half: Behaviorism Second half: Miller and Chomsky

INTRODUCTION Second century. . n First half: Behavourism. n Second half: Miller and Chomsky. n Today. . . n Psycholinguistics is a multidisciplinary field, drawing upon cognitive psychology, theoretical linguistics. . . n n

LANGUAGE ACQUISITION DEFINITION n THEORIES n

NATIVIST THEORY n CHOMSKY'S ASSERTIONS: language is an innately acquired faculty Arguments: n The sort period of time while a child achieves grammatical competence. n The lack of correction or explicit teaching by adults. n

NATIVIST THEORY The poverty of the stimuls available to the child. All normally developing children acquie full competence

NATIVIST THEORY UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR (UG) n Components: n Principles: they enable the infant to recognise features that are common to most or all of the world's languages. n Parameters: they can be set to accord with the language to wich the child is exposed n

NATIVIST THEORY CRITICAL PERIOD; THEORY : n The two emispheres might be "plastic" at birth n The left hemisphere gradually becoming the dominant one for language during the five first years of life n It was not corroborated by recent studies and commentators extended the cut-off point to adolescence n

ALTERNATIVE THEORIES Many alternatives to the nativist view emphasize the role of the LINGUISTIC ENVIRONMENT to which the child is exposed n Jean Piaget (Piatelli-Palmerini 1980) n n Language acquisition is driven by COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT as the child succeeds in making sense of the world around it.

ALTERNATIVE THEORIES Other cognitive accounts – Human mind structure permits to trace patterns in realworld phenomena, including speech, without special language-related device. n Deacon (1997) – It is possible that language took advantage of cognitive operations that served other purposes and that the brain then gradually evolved to accommodate it. n

ALTERNATIVE THEORIES n Simulations of language acquisition based on computer modeling – A so-called return to empiricism (even behaviorism) – A connectionist computer program capable of ‘acquiring’ accurate past tense links. Even though: n n n No abstract rule Based upon generalization across examples and exceptions. However, whether this kind of program achieves its goal or not is open to challenge.

PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS CHILD LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT n SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION AND BILINGUALISM n

Child language development Is language innate? n Many studies have investigated syntax, morhpology lexis an phonology. n syntax: verbs used and its valencies. n Morphology: whether inflecions are acuired by a child in a fixed order. n lexis: the way in which infants succeed in associating meanings with words.

Child language development n Phonology: child face important challenges of establishing articulatory setting and of co-ordinating the movement of the articulators from one to another.

L 2 AND BILINGUALISM Example: English-spanish bilinguals judge wheter letter strings are real words in their L 2. These words are false friend. Spainsh: the word red means “net” English: the word refers to a color.

CONCLUSION

REFERENCES n SIMPSON, J. (ed). 2011. The Routledge Handbook of Applied Linguistics. Routledge. n SCHMITT, N. (ed). 2010. An introduction to applied linguistics. Hodder Education.